I hurt someone who depended on me.

What is the path to freedom from shame?

I murdered my child.

That is a fact.

No amount of equivocation about the value or worth of my child based on his level of development, amount of life experience, dependency, age, location, or abilities will change that fact. He was alive before the abortion and dead after.

You may think his death was justified by his dependency upon me or the circumstances around me at that time. Your moral and ethical evaluation is your own. It reveals your perspective, morals, ethics, and values. It has nothing to do with me or the reality that my child is dead.

I am not attempting to change your mind or to argue a legal perspective.

I am here to acknowledge the factors that led me to Planned Parenthood that day, as women making abortion decisions do not make them in a vacuum. I am here to bring to light the additional harm I experience by those who attempt to manage discomfort by minimizing my culpability.

My choice to swallow abortion pills was a decision 20 years in the making. It was influenced by the sexual abuse I experiences as a child. I was influenced by the physical abuse I experienced as a child. It was influenced by the spiritual abuse I experienced as a child. It was influenced by the reactions of adults upon hearing I had been raped as a teen. It was influenced by the church I attended that kicked out girls who were pregnant. It was influenced by the abusive partner I was with. It was influenced by the coercion and manipulation of the clinic employes. It was influenced by my choice to abuse drugs and alcohol. It was influenced by my choice to use my sexuality as a transactional tool. It was influenced by my choice to live in my car rather than deal with the issues I felt with my family.

I share these factors with you to bring to light the implications of accountability by a society that prioritizes adult wants and feels over children's needs and rights, including children in the womb. Failure to address these factors, as a society, makes everyone culpable for the traumas children endure at the hands of adults. Adults are never free when children are being exploited, used, and abused. We are all bound to the horrors we experience because our priorities do not reflect the world we claim to want.

Government may be able to limit the amount of damage done by passing laws. Government cannot solve the hardened hearts that lead us to choose convenience, self-righteousness, and good "feels" over protection and prioritization of the most vulnerable among us, in and out of the womb. Only millions of individual choices made on a daily basis to turn away from momentary pleasure and embrace responsibility will fix the cultural problem we have.

But I digress...

While all of those factors influenced my decision, none of them are responsible for my decision. I am responsible for my actions. I could not heal from and move beyond the devastation of the death of my child and my role in his death by minimizing or equivocating my responsibility and accountability.

Those who attempt to dehumanize my son do not help me. Whether it is their intent or not, they attempt to harm me in these ways:

- minimizing what I lost that day
- trivializing my grief
- removing my agency
- infantilizing me
- projecting victimhood upon me
- robbing me of the freedom from shame that comes from acknowledging biological truth, taking accountability, and seeking whatever reconciliation and restoration is possible.

I was not a victim of my son. My son was not responsible for my circumstances or my body's reaction to pregnancy. He was completely innocent of any wrongdoing. He had every right to be completely dependent upon me, his mother. He had every right to my protection, provision, and love.

In order to face the justly deserved conviction I felt about my role in my son's death, I had to take complete ownership of my actions. I put those pills in my mouth. I swallowed them. My actions directly caused his death.

In order to take accountability for my actions that caused his death, I must speak the truth about his existence, the manner of his death, and the justice he has been denied.

In order to take accountability for the hurt I caused others by robbing them of the opportunity to have him in their life, I had to confess to them my actions that caused his death.

In order to seek any reconciliation possible, it was imperative I listen to the pain I caused others, accept responsibility for their pain, and ask for their forgiveness.

I cannot restore the life of my son. I cannot restore the relationships and experiences I took from him. I cannot restore the relationships others may have had with him. The only restoration I can accomplish is to restore his worth by honoring the truth of his existence and his death.

Being a Christian, I also have experienced the forgiveness, reconciliation, restoration, mercy, grace, love, and hope that only can be found in the sacrifice made by Jesus Christ. That is the only source of strength and courage large enough to make it possible for me to face any of this.

I share all of this with you so you know one path available, for those accountable for the harm they have caused children, to face and heal from the devastation they feel caused by their own choices.

It is never too late to seek freedom from shame. It is always worth it to attempt whatever reconciliation and restoration may be possible. You are worthy of every bit of mercy, grace, and love I have received.